As more than 60 GP positions remain unfilled state-wide, and regional Emergency Departments persist understaffed and overworked, one senior woman was made to wait in agony for more than five hours before her twisted bowel could be assessed and she was flown to Adelaide for emergency surgery.

Parents of children in drought-affected areas are having to decide which of their kids to remove from boarding schools due to not being able to afford school fees, the head of a national rural group says.